(Almost) every Saturday we review all Kickstarter campaigns in the "Games" category ending in the next week. We do a quick write up on anything we find notable here. This is written from the perspective of people looking to buy games and game accessories that offer interesting mechanics or ideas. We prefer heavy strategy games, RPG Games, miniature-heavy games, and games with real-time mechanics as opposed to party games, children's games, or very light strategy games.

Board Games

This is an expansion for a card game that was released in 2016 (7.3 BGG). This campaign adds 300 cards via mini-expansions. The expansion costs about $20, while the expansion and base game runs about $45. Draconis is a fantasy deck-building game with some really exceptional painted art. The gameplay is a bit more controversial, some people hating the changes it makes to the deckbuilding formula (adding campaigns and dice.)

Drinks & Daggers is actually not a drinking card game, it’s actually based in the universe of the popular Drunks & Dragons podcast. There’s not too much about the gameplay on the page, but it’s a cooperative card game where you’ll be battling monsters. The art is cartoony, but depicts drunk characters quite well.

Dale of Merchants is a merchant/trading game where you play animals that was released in 2015. This campaign is for an expansion that adds a box to hold everything as well as several new decks and cards for the game. The game has a good BGG rating: (7.2), and this collection looks sharp.

This is a dark fantasy-themed worker placement game where you take on the role of an evil city-leader attempting to expand their territory into a frontier called the “Harrowlands.” This means killing the “good” inhabitants of the land with your powerful henchmen and minions. This is a “First Created”, and the publisher “Laboratory H” has only done a small number of very low-print board games. However, the design and art here is top notch, and the campaign has been doing very well, surpassing $75,000 coming into it’s final weekend (it ends tomorrow.)

This is another sharp “First Created” design, but less ambitious than Dark Domains. Summoner’s Isle is an Area Control game that tasks you with summoning creatures to amass power and defeat your opponents.

It seems like having a craft-beer strategy game is an obvious fit for the board game due to the demographic crossover, but surprisingly, this is the first one I’ve see. Homebrewers is a dice-rolling game that allows you to manage your own craft-beer brewery and compete with other players to have the most popular beers. You do this via making good beer, and via promotion. This would make a great gift for craft beer nuts, but won’t be here until next Christmas with a Dec. 2019 delivery date.

Z-War Exodus is a co-op zombie survival game that focuses on leading two survivors through a “comic book campaign” that can branch based on each mission’s results. This sounds a lot like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ comic book campaign. The 3D Terrain is neat and a nice bonus (but you will have to construct that yourself.)

Artemis Project is a great-looking board game that appears to be a smash up of Terraforming Mars and Alien Frotiers, two games I love. The only reason I’m hesitant to back is that both the publisher and the designers are fairly new, with not a lot of games under their belt.

What’s that? No craft beer games? Well how about two in one week. Micro Brew is a 2-player only worker placement microgame (it fits in a mint tin.) You’ll be given a set of customers and must make a beer that is a better match than your rival’s. There looks to be a lot of game here for $20, and looks like an interesting game. In case your wondering which craft beer game is doing better, Microbrew is by about a 5:1 margin vs. Homebrewers. We did end up backing this one.

Waylanders is an interesting-looking 5 vs 5 competitive game where you’ll be picking your warband and randomly building a map at the beginning of each game. It has an interesting mechanic where you have to pass your used action points to the other player, which allows one player to “bank” actions and slow the pace of the game.

It’s rare the FOMO of the week comes in such a small box, but that’s usually what’s expected of Gamelyn Tiny Epic series, and they’ve made an art of applying epic themes to ultra tiny boxes. If every game in my collection had the form factor of a Tiny Epic game, I’d probably have triple the number of games I have now! I personally haven’t really liked their last two games (Tiny Epic Western and Tiny Epic Quest), so I’m passing on this, but the mechs are awesome.

RPGs

Blades & Blasters is set in a medieval setting, but features an alien invasion campaign. This is maybe not as original as the creator may think (Expedition at the Barrier Peaks was one of the first AD&D modules), but it looks like an ambitious campaign to add a ton of sci-fi content to D&D, and it looks to be decently funded with some nice art.

This is an “grindhouse-school” style adventure for 5th edition players level 5-7. What really caught my eye here was the great black and white art and maps. My players have become a fan of horror-themed adventures, and I think this might find a spot at my table in the future.

Miniatures

This campaign comes courtesy of DGS Games who is best known for their miniatures warband game: Freeblades. Thraknasor isn’t scuplted yet, but it’s going to be sculpted by one of the greats: Julie Guthrie, so it will almost certainly be an amazing piece. This Kickstarter is pretty modest, but it has some pretty spectacular rewards like a fully-painted version of the giant Dragon for $600.

Miscellaneous

“The Deck of Many” brand started off quite modestly with a simple deck of cards to use as reference simple items in-game for D&D 5th edition. These flashy new cards provide lenticular cards that animate each of the spells described (and provide spell reference on the back.) These decks are super-expensive, running you $140 for the complete set of spells from level 1-3 .

Miniatures

If you’re in the market for some unique killer 28mm miniatures, Aeon Trespass is a great product. These are mostly designed for serious painters, they are delicate resin with tons of detail, but it might be hard to resist putting some of these guys on your gaming table. We backed their first campaign: Nymphs, and we were very happy with the quality and detail int he minis.

Since I run Dungeon Crawl Classics games I am always on the look out for “commoner” type minaitures, and this is a huge set of them being offered at a good price. I think there must be a lot of other people looking for commoners, because this campaign appears to have done beyond what the creators expected (they are quickly running out of stretch goals.) These appear to be in support of an upcoming game, but we want them for DCC!

If you are interested in subscribing to this list, head over to our newsletters page.

*None of the campaigns mentioned here are sponsored or influenced via payment, prize or other means. If we know or have a connection to someone running the campaign, we will mention it in the campaign notes. If there is a campaign you think should be mentioned here, please e-mail us and tell us what makes it special and we'll review!